Off the Deep End
by SilverWolf7
Summary: Jackie and the Doctor do some talking and planning about Rose while locked up in Torchwood together. Part of my Alternatives series.


Yep, yet another story in my Alternatives series, this one again from Jackie's POV. This one is for the episode Army of Ghosts and is a missing scene.

Off the Deep End

The Doctor sat down and put his feet up on the desk while Yvonne Hartman was out of the room doing whatever it was Torchwood did. Jackie decided that she was too worked up with anger and fright to sit still, got up on her feet and begun pacing instead. How the Doctor lived his life like this all the time was beyond her.

"That's not going to help, you know. It's only going to make you tired, and I suspect later on we're going to be doing a whole lot of running, so sit down, before you wear yourself out."

She sat. He was the voice of experience after all. "Why did you grab me? And don't say you didn't know it wasn't me, you felt our faces to purposefully choose me, rather than Rose."

He nodded and grinned. "Yep! Why? Because the last thing I wanted in this situation was Rose beside me."

She fell silent after that, surprised. He had rather gone through this little adventure of his with her? That...was quite the role reversal. "Why'd you rather me than her?"

The Doctor put his feet back on the ground, turned to look at her and stared her right in the eyes and told her upright and straight. "Because Rose has gone off the deep end, Jackie. The last thing I want is to get one or both of us killed because she believes nothing can touch her."

Shaking her head, a frown on her face, she had to ask, even though she was dreading the answer. "What do you mean, gone off the deep end?"

"I have had all sorts of people travel with me Jackie. Most of them quit on their own, either they find someone and want to stay with them, or they find themselves in the right time and place for them to go back to their lives as they left them, or they simply ask for me to take them back. For some it becomes too much to bear any longer. Some are unlucky in that I had no choice but to leave them, while others still have died. I won't lie and I never have lied to you about it Jackie, my life is dangerous. Rose...I brought her back earlier today, in the hopes that I could quietly leave and let you deal with it. I'm sorry, but it was the only way I could think of..."

She nodded and frowned. "Why, Doctor? You know she doesn't want to leave you. She now believes that living on Earth a normal life is the worst possible thing anyone can possibly do..."

He nodded and winced back at her. "Yeah. I know. I'm sorry."

"Well stop being sorry for one second and tell me why."

"Something about travelling with me...it brought out her worst qualities. Usually it brings out the best in people, but the reverse happened with Rose. It was a shock to me. She won't listen to reason and will go do her own thing because she has gotten it into her head that no matter what she can't die, because I'm there to rescue her. She barely blinks at having a gun pointed at her, she laughs at the most inappropriate times, because sometimes I do. What she doesn't understand is I do it for a reason, she does it because she believes she can. A while ago I woke up and she was in my bed with her hand down my pants. And believe it or not Jackie, I don't want to have sex with your daughter. Worst thing, she saw absolutely nothing wrong with me waking up and finding her there with no want to do anything like that with her, because she wanted it."

"WHAT?! She can't do that! She was raised on an estate, she knows that kind of thing is bad!"

He winced again. "Jackie...she did the same thing to Mickey, but Mickey didn't say anything about it. I thought maybe it was just travelling with me that was bringing this out in Rose...but it isn't is it?"

Jackie could feel her face getting hot, before she tried to hide it. "I don't know. She was always asking for things I couldn't afford. She always wanted what she couldn't have, you know. And she wouldn't quit until she got it. You should have seen the look on her face when I told her she couldn't have a car because I couldn't afford it. My own one is hard enough, but two...she didn't get that I really couldn't do it. So, she did the next best thing. Found herself a boyfriend with a car."

"Mickey..."

"Yeah. Poor sod fell madly in love with her too, and she kept on dumping him when the next best thing came along and taking him back when that failed. And then there's you. You are everything she always wanted. A way to get out of her poor life with me, see more than anyone else possibly could, and even better, she'd be bagging herself an alien. Even better, the only one left of his kind. And even better than that, the last one of his kind who can travel through time and space on a ship that is bigger on the inside and _no one else has_. You're _unique_ Doctor. She'd eat that right up. I tried to get her to stay at home, but she refused. Would barely speak to me. And that after a year of not knowing where the hell she was. She didn't have any thought at all that I was worried sick. To her it was only three days. That's all that mattered."

The look in the Doctor's eyes was something she'd never seen. It was understanding, mixed with a bit of sadness, and compassion. And in with all that was a rather huge helping of guilt. "I made it worse. But now it stops. I can't do it anymore, Jackie. For the first time ever, it's me who can't handle it any longer. I can't keep on living in fear that I'm going to wake up and find her in my bed again. I can't live with the fear that she's going to go ahead and do something on her own and get herself or me, or even both of us, killed. And it's heading that way, Jackie. So please...will you help?"

She nodded. "Yeah. Though she doesn't listen to me either, and she'd probably do anything to get back. Just a warning there, Doctor."

Sighing, the Doctor looked at her and grinned, and it wasn't a happy look. It looked more like the life had been sucked out of him. "Yeah, I know. Which is what makes this so difficult. That and I'll miss her. I will, Jackie. I'll miss her. She and the TARDIS are all I have, but...I just can't take it anymore."

She leant over, patted his hand and smiled at him, hoping her smile actually had some warmth in it, or she'd be looking like him. "I'll take care of her for all our sakes then, alright?"

He nodded and some life came back into his eyes. "Yeah. Thanks, Jackie."

They fell into silence which was only stopped when Yvonne came barging back into her office, where they were currently locked up. Well, that meant no more conversation until they were out of this mess.

She hoped that was soon. She needed to think of a way to break it to Rose that the Doctor was gone and not coming back. And the one person she could think of to help her with that was the one sitting beside her, his feet once again up on the desk.

How she had ever hated the Doctor was beyond her. He was still doing whatever it took to keep Rose safe. This time he was also doing it for himself though.

All she had to hope for was that Rose didn't do something stupid in return.


End file.
